Rise in jobs for grads fuelling boom in hiring

BIG GRADUATE recruiters are boosting hiring programmes even further this year, with vacancies up by more than a third, and many firms saying they are yet to fill positions for this year’s intake.

Figures from jobs site Adzuna today show vacancies for graduates up 37 per cent from 2012. And though there is still fierce competition, with 30 graduates for each role advertised, the number has declined from 50 last year. London and the south east are still favoured locations for graduate recruiters: with almost half of all the opportunities.

Nearly nine in 10 firms looking to hire people from universities report they still have openings, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters. Many are in engineering and IT roles, where 23 and 26 per cent of positions are unfilled respectively.

The big four accounting firms are also looking to hire. Both KPMG and PwC are boosting the number of graduates by 30 per cent to around 1,000 and 1,450 respectively. Deloitte recruited 1,658 people into entry-level jobs in 2013, and plan to raise the number. EY said its number of school leavers employed would rise by 44 per cent to 100 people.